How Was My Week? It Had Its Ups and Downs.

Maybe we should all pack day bags with our diabetes essentials in them when we go out to events. Say to watch a parade, or a ballgame, engage in a day of shopping…or cheer on somebody running a marathon.

What would you — and I — need if, say, a bomb went off and we unexpectedly ended up in a hospital or couldn’t get home or our hotel was off limits (or partially gone)?

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It’s something to think about. Along with “what’s this world coming to, anyway?”

My weekend was busy. We had a gardening resource fair at the synagogue and I took a portable garden that was two feet by four feet and set it on a table, along with some seeds for radishes, spring onions, lettuce, peas, and calendula (it’s a flower with edible petals) and let children who wanted to get their hands dirty plant about half of it. It was divided into one-foot squares, so they’d plant a square, then label it.

After that was over, we gathered up the garden, seeds, and a plant blanket and took it a couple of blocks down to a small nursing home where they were happy to have something else for the residents to do. I say that not to pat myself on the back, but to suggest something you might do for a nursing home or two in your community. If it’s placed on a table, people can sit and garden.

My honey-do dude got three four-foot lengths of boards that were two inches thick and eight inches wide, cut one board in half and made the two-foot-by-four-foot garden: Put a piece of plywood on the bottom and drill holes in the bottom. Fill it with planting mixture (I use equal parts of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost), then mark off one-foot squares with laths. You can recycle wood from pallets, scraps from a construction site, slats from window blinds instead of laths. Whatever works. And it only needs to be six inches tall.

Back home, my granddaughter helped me clean up my gardens, which should have been done last fall, but I was lazy. I have four four-foot-by-four-foot, two-foot-high gardens in my backyard. They are not portable!

After all of that activity (mainly from shivering; it was too cold for my Mickey Mouse jacket, but my winter jacket had already been put away), my blood glucose went…up. I blew it off to a guacamole burger and a pumpkin cookie (or two), corrected, and went on my merry way.

But it didn’t come down. Had my string of lows come to an end? I corrected again, and went to bed. I was still high the next morning. I checked to see if any of my connections were loose. Checked to see if insulin was coming out of my tubing (yes).

Then I checked where the cannula goes into me. It didn’t. It had come out. I was giving myself insulin and it wasn’t going anywhere near inside my body. No wonder I was high.

That fixed, I discovered my string of lows had not come to an end. Toward the end of last week, I sent in a seven-day intensive glucose log along with the corresponding days of a download (upload?) from my continuous glucose monitor (CGM). I haven’t heard back from my endocrinologist yet. I’ll have to call his nurse. Doc is usually a lot better about those things. Maybe he’s on vacation.

Maybe he’s as tired of dealing with my lows as I am.

I should learn how to do that myself. After all, I didn’t have any problems adjusting insulin when on injections. But I just can’t seem to figure out adjustments on a pump. But, then, I only started pumping more than 14 years ago.

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jim snell

A day bag is a great idea and I do that. Meter , glucose tablets, strips, pills for day, compact time clock, insulin. Small compact bag. I am able to deal with other life emergencies without adding to that list from my t2 diabetes.

I can whip out in the day on moments notice covered for most usual issues and emergencies and ready to roll and not sweat it.

Greg

Anyone have a good suggestion or a compact case a man ud use, that would also hold a glucagon kit ?

I use a Thermos brand lunch box. A soft sided insulated lunch/cooler. It keeps it cool in summer. Looks great to carry it around.

jim snell

Hey: that’s better than mine. Thank you.

JOAN

I have the opposite problem after 8 years on metformin and great control suddenly I have sudden lows. I have to carry food everywhere. I haven’t taken any metformin for about 1 month and am still having the same problem. At about 100 i can feal the low comming on and I have to eat. I have tried letting it go awhile and in less than 1 hr. it is in the low 60”s has anyone else delt with this problem

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